The Common Good Economy

How to Make Capitalism Work for Us All

By: Mariana Mazzucato

From the award-winning author of The Entrepreneurial State and Mission Economy, an inspiring call to solve our deepest challenges—from inequality to climate change—by embracing a radical new approach to economics and the economy

Whether it’s the water crisis, widespread poverty, or the next global pandemic, the problems that threaten humanity require collective action. But policymakers are confronting these problems armed with economic models that are missing one crucial element: They do not treat the common good as an objective worth achieving.

In this ambitious and timely new book, economist Mariana Mazzucato issues a corrective to prevailing economic thinking by defining a new theory of economics with the common good at its center. She shows how to go beyond fixing markets around the edges and instead reshape them to embody principles of reciprocity rather than extraction, and collectivism rather than individualism. It is not enough, she argues, to talk about “public goods” and the “commons”; we must truly achieve the “common good.” Drawing on wide-ranging philosophical traditions and global examples where seeds of the common good are found, Mazzucato reveals how common-good economics can help systematically transform how we build community and an economy that serves all.

The Common Good Economy is a stirring call for governments, the private sector, and everyday people to act boldly to achieve the greater good.

Critic reviews

“A great book on how to rebuild the economy and our society by putting the common good at the center. A vital read.” —Thomas Piketty, New York Times bestselling author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century